GPS week rollover

The GPS system uses 10 bit numbers for the current week, and this Saturday will mark the second time that has reset to zero since the GPS constellation was first launched. Any devices more than 10 years old are at risk of glitching when the date suddenly goes back to 1999....

And even if you don't have any old GPS equipment of your own you might not be in the clear...seems that the electrical grid uses GPS to time operations in separate areas too. Oopsie.

https://www.energy.gov/oe/articles/april-2019-global-positioning-system-gps-week-number-rollover

Hopefully utility operators have paid attention and are ready, if not we may get a chance to test our grid down preparations during a short outage.

Y2K all over again! Just not as extensive.

Thanks DMW568, I'll have to check on mine.

Apple is releasing updates for older iPhone models:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210239

Basically any iPhone from version 4 on up will have software updates available that will fix the GPS rollover issue that will otherwise occur on November 3, 2019.

Since this affects my old spare iPhone that I kept for GPS and Kindle ebooks, I thought I'd share in case others kept old iPhones for the same reasons...

thank you!

I don't think very many people know how heavily GPS satellites depend on ground stations to keep their data accurate.

If a nuclear exchange (EMP or otherwise) takes out the ground stations, the entire system will fall apart in a matter of weeks.

I have an atlas of the entire USA (and parts of Canada and Mexico) in all our vehicles. We've been many places where the GPS couldn't connect for whatever reason, and we drag out the map to take a look.